Chapter Text
Heroes are overrated.
Let’s get that out of the way first, all right?
One guy – or girl! I don’t discriminate - leaping into danger, just for someone else to take the fall with them if they can’t hack it? What do you call that except an idiot? And yeah, a person can be real strong, ‘specially if they’ve got a lot of people backing them up. But what happens after they fail? Huh?
Who gets left to pick up all the eggs that fell out of your basket? It probably won’t be a hero. It’ll probably be the first random Joe who steps in the mess himself. Will he succeed? What about when all that’s left to save the universe is some schmuck who was just the only left to do anything at all about it?
How well do you think that poor fool will do?
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There was a time and place for everything and everyone.
For Vexen, formerly the number four of Organization XIII and a reserve member of the Real Organization XIII, he was in the perfect location at the perfect time to see the oncoming end of all things. The location was a barren wasteland, more specifically a butte sticking up from the barren wasteland, and the time was shortly after his previous affiliates had murdered the Light Warriors that were the only viable opposition to Xehanort’s ambitions. For all that the plan had called for a climactic showdown out of some child’s story, a ‘clash’ seemed to be definable as a brutal ambush by one against many, with the final blow coming from a Demon Tide that was thrown at them seemingly as an afterthought.
There were no more Keyblade wielders left now. Not on the side of the Light, at least. From his vantage point high above the ground, Vexen could see the seven flashes of light that had risen up from where the heroes had fallen. They were rushing through the air towards Xehanort and his lackeys, on a collision course with the old man. The distance was great – Vexen had intended to stay unseen – but he thought he could see Xehanort laughing. He could certainly see the great black Keyblade appear in Xehanort’s hand. As the seven lights reached the old man, they slowed and began to gently orbit him. Vexen realized with a nasty jolt that the seven lights were Keyblades. But of course they were Keyblades. Keyblades were the cause of all this mess. What else would they have been?
Xehanort began rising into the air and the clouds above him parted to reveal the end goal of all the madness. Kingdom Hearts was beautiful in the way a good dream was beautiful. Also like a good dream, it had every potential to become a nightmare. Vexen had never wanted it specifically for himself, had only ever studied it as an omnipotent mean to a relatively insignificant end, but staring at the eldritch satellite that orbited this little fragment of a world in a dead end of the universe, Vexen came to a series of rather startling conclusions that were going to affect a great deal going forward.
Here was the first.
Vexen and Even were failures. They had failed at being a good apprentice, a good scientist, a good friend, a good teacher and, most damning, a good person. Everything over the last few months had been a desperate attempt to fix at least some of that, to ensure that his mistakes would not ripple out to destroy any more lives beyond his own and those who had already been harmed. He had taken a light touch, hiding in his lab and behind his well-earned reputation as a cold, cowardly academic. He had left the heavy lifting to others with more power than he. He had told himself that his contributions would be enough. Now he looked inside himself with all the clinical detachment that came with knowing you were irrevocably fucked and found that there were a million things he could and should have done differently, if only he had managed to scrape together the courage to see it done.
Here was the second.
There was no one left to fix this mess. Everyone with the power to affect a change who had been in a position to affect that change was now dead, crushed beneath a Demon Tide or struck down by one of Xehanort’s many selves. Just as an object at rest remains at rest, and an object in motion remains in motion at constant speed and in a straight line unless acted on by an unbalanced force, so too would Xehanort continue his formation of the χ-blade unless someone did something about it. There were no remaining people with the power to affect a change in the plans of the Real Organization XIII. There was, however, one person in a position to do so had they the power.
Here was the third.
He still wanted to fix things. Even as he lay on his belly on top of a wasteland butte while a madman laid hands on the χ-blade and all his chances at survival or redemption faded like the dust dancing in the afternoon wind, all Vexen could think about was how much he wanted to get this one thing right. If he had to die, let it be quick and painless and defying Xehanort’s mad ambitions. Let it be in service to the king and world he never should have raised a hand against. Let it be against the snake in the grass they never should have brought into their home. Let there be something good to his name, even if no one else saw it. Let him have done something of worth.
Here was the fourth.
He was a Nobody. His heart had been removed once again and the formation of a new one, although possible, was a process. The first time around he had been actively misled by Xemnas and so missed valuable data that would provide a growth rate for the replacement. This time around he had been too busy with the Replicas and his own fumbling attempts at espionage to make a proper experiment of it. The fact that he had gone nearly a decade with little to no emotion to show save at the end would imply that a few months was not enough time to fully replace the lost heart. In spite of that implication, he was more willing to throw himself into the fray with the entirety of the malcontents across from him than he was to return to Radiant Garden for however little time they had remaining to tell his king and fellows that he had run away.
Here was the fifth.
The entirety of the Real Organization was gathered in a relatively tight circle with Xehanort at the center and none of them had noticed him yet.
It was this more than anything that finally spurred him to move. A lifetime of being one of two weak links in the group had, if nothing else, given him a superb sense of when to strike.
Vexen summoned Frozen Pride and ripped open a dark corridor.
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Well, here’s a depressing situation.
A desperate man at the end of his rope ready to go out in a suicide attack.
And it would be suicide, right?
One shut-in Nobody against the forces of Darkness is not a fair fight. Slaughter, more like.
Here’s the thing, though.
Heroes don’t always win….
...But long odds don’t always fail.
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When you were only good at one type of magic, you worked really hard to be very good at that one type of magic. It was a lesson Vexen had etched into his frozen soul through every single humiliating spar he had ever suffered through. So while he was never going to be as fast as Xaldin or as strong as Lexeaus or as canny as Xigbar or as anything as Xemnas, he could still cast ice magic with the best of them. It was useful in preserving specimens, in keeping himself cool in the summer heat and (here was the relevant part) locking down entire areas in a very sudden manner.
Master Xehanort and the Real Organization XIII had been prepared for many things with the arrival of the χ-blade, but having a Triple Blizzaja fired right into the center of their group formation was not one of them.
The top of the butte was crowned from edge to edge in a massive icecap that towered nearly as high as the butte itself. At the base, quite literally frozen in place at the moment of the spell’s strike, were thirteen individuals in black coats. Each of them was a menace to the universe, but Vexen only had eyes for the one in the center. Master Xehanort had the χ-blade in his right hand and it was angled up towards Kingdom Hearts. From the dark corridor hanging in midair, Vexen reached out and touched the icecap. At his will, a crack shattered the mass nearly straight to the core. Vexen stepped into the newly created gap and eased his way forward though the narrow passage to where the χ-blade waited. Master Xehanort’s hand was freed down to the wrist, but no further and Vexen seized the ridiculous sparkling green-yellow blade of the χ-blade with every intention of gently pulling it loose.
Instead, Master Xehanort’s grip suddenly tightened.
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Reach out and touch someone, isn’t that a saying?
Why wouldn’t you want to forge as many connections as possible? Your friends are your power, right? Sure.
Thing is, you don’t need to like someone to have a connection to them. There are other ways.
Like letting someone magically brand you. Or letting someone put a piece of their heart in your own. Or grabbing a Keyblade. You know, those weapons that are extensions of their wielders and have a fundamental connection to hearts?
For that matter, why be so picky? Let’s go for all three!
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There was a whirlwind of vertigo, confusion, rage and fear. None of it belonged to Vexen.
Then Vexen was very suddenly no longer in the Keyblade Graveyard. He found himself standing on a pitted, shattered circle of stained glass with over a dozen other people, only two of whom he was even vaguely happy to see. A slurry of emotions hit him all at once, but gently, like someone yelling at him from a great distance. There was the vertigo, confusion, rage and fear again. There was frustration, jealously, disbelief, joy and dysphoria too. Vexen was scientist who had specialized in the study of hearts for many years, so he knew what a Station of Awakening was. What he had not considered until that moment was what a Station would be like if it were shared between over a dozen people with the same piece of a heart within them.
Saïx and Demyx were as disoriented as he was, but Saïx was something neither of them were and that was a vicious bastard. Being trapped with your enemies who were in perfect health and no allies to your name was not a prime situation for betrayal, but rip everyone in your unstable heart gestalt into a combined heartscape with no warning and that could change things.
Saïx’s first blow sent Marluxia falling off the edge of the platform and into the darkness of the unknown below. His second did the same for the Riku Replica and his third would have done the same to Ansem, Seeker of Darkness, had Xemnas and Larxene not simultaneously intervened to attack Saïx themselves. It was a clumsy, uncoordinated assault, but it did its job of giving Saïx something else to do.
Demyx had pulled out his sitar and was blasting rhythmic waves of water over the platform, even as he screamed that none of this was his idea. It was not doing a thing to harm anyone, but it was knocking almost everyone who had been standing down onto their knees and bellies. Everyone except Xigbar, who had bent space to stand in the air and was lining up an arrowgun on each of the traitors in his sight. Luxord was on his back and being swept away to the edge, until he cast a spell and disappeared into a card that danced away into the air.
All of this came to Vexen starkly and swiftly. He was still curiously empty, still riding that wave of gentle apathy that had consumed him since he realized how badly things had gone. Perhaps it was their nature as Nobodies that let them fight back more effectively in this place than those who were closer to hearts. Young Xehanort was curled up on the platform, struggling to keep his energy blades active. The old master was on his knees, the χ-blade barely in his grip. The Xehanort he had known, that young man with the tan skin, was screaming endlessly on his back. Vanitas was literally coming apart, darkness steaming off of his limbs. The Replica girl had collapsed into a boneless heap.
Vexen found himself in the curious position of being completely ignored by everyone through the virtue of simply not doing anything worth noticing.
In that place where they were all formed of emotion and not flesh, where one person’s feeling was everyone’s feeling, where his sense of self was becoming oddly melted to the others, Vexen realized something very important and very obvious that he probably should have noticed before.
The act of placing a shard of Xehanort's own dark heart inside of Vexen’s heart had been intended as a catalyst to transform Vexen into one of the Seekers of Darkness and, in fairness, it certainly had the potential to do that.
But it was also, fundamentally, a connection between their two hearts.
And connections went both ways.
If they had been anywhere else but inside this twisted, gestalt Station – if it had been any other circumstances than the crazed free-for-all currently enveloping them – Vexen knew this would never have worked. Xehanort was infinitely more vicious than he and had the benefit of decades as a Keyblade Master, the closest thing to an expert in the heart as there was in this day and age.
But they were in the joined Station and Xehanort was incapacitated, anyone able and willing to help him otherwise occupied for a short time.
Vexen calmly stepped over the twitching form of Young Xehanort, walked around the screaming form of what he somewhat sentimentally referred to as his Xehanort, and stopped in front of Master Xehanort. He bent down and wrapped his free hand around the handle of the χ-blade, just as his shield came up to smash its edge into Master Xehanort’s head.
In this place that was not physical, the weapons they used and the bodies they wore were more of an idea than a reality. Was it really Frozen Pride that he had just struck with? Or was it the remnants of his pride forged into the shape of his favorite weapon? The question was answered with brutal swiftness when contact was made with that body that was not a body.
Sight vanished, sound vanished, scent vanished, touch vanished, taste vanished.
The others were still there, still fighting, but all of existence had narrowed down to two points in a line with a star between them.
It lay there between them, between all of them, but between those two in particular. Both pulling desperately, but one had the weight of a web dragging him down and the other was only a shadow.
GIVE IT TO ME
All the charm, all the arrogance, all the sleek assurance of control and power had gone away. All that was left was a struggling, screaming man who had been trapped by the very chains he set on his slaves. The end of his plan was in sight, literally in hand, and now a piece he had discarded was ruining everything.
I don’t care if you die or I die/I am not letting you do this
There was a very distant flare of support elsewhere in the web and he had no time to summon up the name, just a memory of a dreadful scar. There was still someone else fighting to help him.
He dove deeper, closer to the star and to the hateful, screaming thing.
He reached the star and with it, the man.
He saw images, flashes with no context. The better part of a century of life and almost all of it steeped in darkness both mundane and extraordinary. Too much to sort through and he had neither the time nor the strength to do it. It did not matter anyway. All that mattered was wresting control.
He seized the star and surface thoughts from the other end came with it.
How he had seen/felt the other touch the χ-blade and, every inch of him unable to move, yanked on the one connection he still had a hold of. How he had thought to crush the other’s shallow heart and reduce him to nothing for this affront. How he had lost control as soon as he opened the web, too desperate and in horrible pain from the ice to properly corral the others as he should have. How he had been planning this for years and years, done every vile thing under the sun for this one moment, and it would not slip out of his hands like this, not while he lived. How to use the χ-blade to enter Kingdom Hearts.
The shadow stopped.
How to use the χ-blade to enter Kingdom Hearts.
What using the χ-blade meant.
What could come about from using the χ-blade.
The man was doing something beyond screaming, something only possible in this place where emotions were not contained by flesh, but it was too late. Even as the others in the web began to look behind themselves, within themselves, it was too late.
He seized the star, seized control, and sent a final impulse to the memory of a scar.
Keep them busy for as long as you can
He did not wait for acknowledgment, could not spare the time to see if it was received, not when this tempest of conjoined emotion was his best shield and it was getting under control the longer they all acclimated to this place.
He rose away from the screaming thing and it was not quite like swimming or quite like falling. He was at the Station with all of its chaos and then -
- he was in an icecap and the χ-blade was in his hand.
The setting sun had turned everything red, the light was refracting off the ice all around him and his eyes hurt horribly, but that was the hilt of the χ-blade in his free hand. Not the blade he had grabbed at the start. The hilt.
There was probably something terribly important and terribly obvious about that too, but time was a precious commodity and he was not Luxord.
Stolen thoughts rattled around his head while a cacophony of screaming continued somewhere beyond that.
Vexen ignored the latter and focused on the former as he brought the ludicrous looking, ridiculously oversized, absolutely impractical χ-blade up to Kingdom Hearts and ordered it to accept him in.
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Ah, it is a pain when plans get ruined, right? All the buildup, all that work, and something or someone just comes in to kick it all to pieces.
Could make someone really mad, you know?
Why do you get to ruin this grand design? I put in so much effort, pain and time to make this happen. You don’t get to have a say in things!
...Is probably what someone would say. I’m not that dramatic.
It’s true though. You can have every advantage, do everything right, and still lose.
That’s why heroes fail.
All those plans to save the universe don’t come to anything if someone smarter than you or stronger than you or just plain luckier than you interferes.
...That last one is the worst, though.
Losing to someone you never saw coming, just because they got one lucky break?
Ouch.
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He was in Radiant Garden.
It was not the Radiant Garden of the present, the patched mess that was only just barely a functional town again. This was the Radiant Garden of the past, of his apprenticeship.
He was standing in the square in front of the castle gate. The flower beds were in full bloom and it was a sunny day with a bright blue sky. There was no one else in the square with him and, somehow, he knew there would be no one if he went looking in the town. This place was just a memory given form. It was Kingdom Hearts reflecting his heart, no matter how weak and pathetic it was, and Vexen would always have Radiant Garden as it was in his heart.
He could still feel the others, Master Xehanort above all the rest, but it was dimmer now that he was here. He could feel something else too. A pull from the χ-blade, leading him towards the castle. He knew too, somehow, that what he sought was what that pull was leading him towards.
The others were breaking loose from the Station, from the ice. Xehanort, at least, would almost certainly know how to follow him into this place.
Vexen ran.
He ran up the stairs through the gate and towards the castle. He had no plan, no grand design. Just the knowledge that as long as he held the χ-blade, Xehanort could not get what he wanted and that if he held the χ-blade when he reached the core of Kingdom Hearts, maybe Xehanort would never get what he wanted.
He ran through the main door that Aeleus and Dilan had wasted so many hours of their lives guarding. He ran through the main hall that he walked into so many times with Ienzo in tow. He took the elevator that Braig had sabotaged multiple times just to piss people off. He ran through the dark basement that Xehanort had helped make into a house of horrors. And he skidded to a stop just in front of the door that radiated power, the door that they had shoved their king and teacher through, just as he felt the arrival of several someones in this empty realm far above him.
Vexen stopped and he realized he had no idea what to do.
Xehanort, all the Xehanorts, were coming. He had a weapon he had no idea how to wield and a functionally omnipotent magical artifact he had no idea how to activate. The same intuitive knowledge that told him there were no residents of Radiant Garden in this realm told him that trying to scurry out through a dark corridor would be futile. Even if he could, where would he go that they could not find him? Master Xehanort had not cared to chase after him before, not so close to his plan’s end. Now that Vexen held the χ-blade, that no longer held true. The same connection that had let him steal the χ-blade would lead them to him like a compass.
In knowing he had no hope, there had been serenity. But now he had stolen the χ-blade, entered Kingdom Hearts and found the way to redemption shut in his face one final time.
Even for a shadow of a heart, it was too much.
Terror rose up, bitter and thick in his throat. The door that in the true Radiant Garden had led to the heart of the world and in this shadow of a world led to everything a heart could desire held firm under his shield and the χ-blade’s strikes. He conjured up and cast chunks of ice at the door and it held firm. He ordered it to open with something approaching hysteria as he felt that web of rage drawing ever closer to where he had run.
It remained shut.
Despair replaced terror and he fell to his knees.
Somewhere far above him, where the hard light ramps led back to world of sunlight, he could hear a door sliding open and many pounding footsteps.
Far worse than that was the sudden, probing stab of another within him. It dug through his chest and up towards his eyes, settling into his skull.
YOU COUL
D NOT
OPEN IT
Sick, coagulated joy spread through him like tree roots.
WAIT RIGHT THERE/I WILL BE WITH YOU DIRECTLY AND WE SHALL HAVE SUCH A TALK
The invasion faded and he was alone in his body again, except for the distant pull of the web.
Despair blanked out every other rational thought. Not escape, not rescue, not vengeance, not defiance.
His hand convulsed to grip at the priceless, useless χ-blade and the maddening thought arose, that if only he could have prevented any of this from happening, it would have been better for everyone.
It was a childish, irrational, stupid thing for a grown scientist to think and so, of course, Vexen should have known that it would get a reaction.
The χ-blade lurched in his grip and a beam of light emerged to strike the door that led to the core of Kingdom Hearts. With a click like a gunshot and a creak like an avalanche, the door to infinity opened and a tidal wave of power and possibility fell out on top of Vexen.
Then the light faded, the door snapped shut and the feeling of power dwindled to nothing.
Vexen, left sitting on his knees on the hard stone floor of a Radiant Garden that was not, felt a bit cheated.
Behind him a high pitched form of white noise was beginning to sound and it took the beleaguered Nobody a few seconds to realize it was the sound of several someones – or really, just multiple versions of the same someone – screaming their evil little hearts out.
Vexen twisted around on his knees and preformed an 180° turn just in time to see that his visitors – everyone save Marluxia, Saïx, Demyx and the Replica girl – were sprinting towards him en mass and, amazingly, old Master Xehanort was in the lead.
There were quite a lot of words being thrown at him, but the basic gist of it seemed to be, “what did you just do?”
Vexen, still in something of a state of shock, could only say, “Nothing happened.”
The χ-blade vanished from his grip in a flash and reappeared in Master Xehanort’s hand. The old man was definitely on his last legs, but he still mustered up the strength to point the χ-blade at the door to the core.
Nothing happened.
The feeling of power was gone. The door was just a door to nothing now and as if to cement that fact beyond all doubt, Radiant Garden began to wash away around them. Like a reverse mirage, the buttes and plains of the wasteland were fading into visibility.
“You used it,” Xigbar spat out. His one yellow eye was angled down into a glare so sharp Vexen could almost feel it cutting him. Wait, no, that was the χ-blade Master Xehanort was pressing against his neck.
“I got nothing from it,” Vexen protested uselessly, not even sure what he was trying to say or why.
“But you used it!” Xigbar howled, looking as furious as Vexen had ever seen him.
The χ-blade was slowly falling apart into particles of light, the familiar shape of Xehanort’s massive black Keyblade returning.
Under better circumstances Vexen would have appreciated that returning to the Keyblade Graveyard and seeing the χ-blade beginning to vanish meant he had technically succeeded.
Under the circumstances he found himself in, he was just glad that Master Xehanort shoving the χ-blade through his heart as fast as he did meant that none of the others could get their pound of flesh out of him.
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Well, it looks like that’s the story.
The light fell to the darkness as was foretold and then everything that happened after, happened after.
No one really wanted to know what happened after the Keyblade War, right? Why would anyone tell that story?
...Oh, you want to hear that story?
Well, fine then.
Because I got to admit, I didn’t intend to write any of this. I had my whole outline ready to go and this was not part of it.
But lucky breaks and people you don’t see, remember?
So I guess you could say this is where the narrative gets out of my control.
Well, it’s story time, kiddies.
And grab some snacks, because it’s going to be a long one.